{"id":5761,"date":"2011-04-02T23:59:52","date_gmt":"2011-04-02T23:59:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/?p=5761"},"modified":"2016-05-11T16:53:50","modified_gmt":"2016-05-11T16:53:50","slug":"saturday-2nd-april-2011-back-in-belgium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/?p=5761","title":{"rendered":"Saturday 2nd April 2011 &#8211; BACK IN BELGIUM"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After my vicissitudes on the road yesterday, I finally came to rest on the service area at Nivelles at about 03:00 \u2013 a 19-hour day (teachers, please take note).<\/p>\n<p>At least it gave me the opportunity to have one of the best nights&#8217; sleeps that I&#8217;ve had on the road for quite some time so next morning I was up and about and ready for anything.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.erichall.eu\/images\/1104\/1104001.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/www.erichall.eu\/images\/1104\/1104001.jpg\" alt=\"loading belgian land rover minerva onto ifor williams trailer brussels belgium\" width=\"300\" height=\"204\"\/><\/a>Next morning I went round to Bernards to load up the Minerva. It&#8217;s not that heavy and we managed to push it onto the trailer without even the hint of a winch &#8211; really!<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve left the trailer parked up at Bernard&#8217;s house now waiting for me to go back to pick it up tomorrow late afternoon. I have plenty to do (like shopping and the like) and I don&#8217;t want to drag all of this around behind me through the streets of Brussels and anywhere else.<br \/>\n<br clear=\"both\"><\/p>\n<p>After spending 2 hours discussing solar panels with 2 guys from the Congo (it\u2019s better than Nigeria I suppose) whom I met outside Carrefour, I did some shopping and then went to the flat where I half-loaded the van.<\/p>\n<p>But you all missed the excitement there as well \u2013 and Terry would have loved this.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>A van pulls into the private parking space of someone while it unloads some stuff<\/li>\n<li>the owner of the private parking space pulls up behind and blocks them in \u2013 and then walks away<\/li>\n<li>the owner of the van goes to fetch the President of the Conseil de Gerance<\/li>\n<li>the President of the Conseil de Gerance accuses me of parking my van there (it\u2019s a small white Volkswagen we are talking about here by the way) so we have &#8220;a frank exchange of views&#8221; about this and he won&#8217;t be coming to talk to me again.<\/li>\n<li>the owner of the car says that he is going to leave his car parked blocking this van in \u2013 and obstructing the passageway \u2013 all night<\/li>\n<li>The President tells the owner of the car \u201cyes, you do that \u2013 it\u2019ll serve these bastards in this van right\u201d<\/li>\n<li>The President and the car driver wander off arm-in-arm more or less, to the accompaniment of some ribald commentary from Yours Truly.<\/li>\n<li>The woman from the next garage can\u2019t get her car into her garage<\/li>\n<li>The man in the previous garage can\u2019t get his car out of his garage<\/li>\n<li>The police are called.<\/li>\n<li>Having stirred the pot by coming out with my usual round of &#8230; errr &#8230; helpful comments, I wander away.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Isn\u2019t life exciting in Brussels?<\/p>\n<p>And now just for a change, I\u2019m in a small hoted in Ghent. I\u2019ve been for a walk around and I\u2019ve had some chips and a vegetable kebab and I\u2019m okay. Here I\u2019ll be staying until the morning.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a departure from the usual procedure, I know, but I just fancied doing something a little different. And why not?<\/p>\n<div class='watch-action'><div class='watch-position align-left'><div class='action-like'><a class='lbg-style1 like-5761 jlk' href='javascript:void(0)' data-task='like' data-post_id='5761' data-nonce='5b92a6d00a' rel='nofollow'><img class='wti-pixel' src='https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/wp-content\/plugins\/wti-like-post\/images\/pixel.gif' title='Like' \/><span class='lc-5761 lc'>0<\/span><\/a><\/div><div class='action-unlike'><a class='unlbg-style1 unlike-5761 jlk' href='javascript:void(0)' data-task='unlike' data-post_id='5761' data-nonce='5b92a6d00a' rel='nofollow'><img class='wti-pixel' src='https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/wp-content\/plugins\/wti-like-post\/images\/pixel.gif' title='Unlike' \/><span class='unlc-5761 unlc'>0<\/span><\/a><\/div> <\/div> <div class='status-5761 status align-left'><\/div><\/div><div class='wti-clear'><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After my vicissitudes on the road yesterday, I finally came to rest on the service area at Nivelles at about 03:00 \u2013 a 19-hour day (teachers, please take note). At least it gave me the opportunity to have one of the best nights&#8217; sleeps that I&#8217;ve had on the road for quite some time so [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[162,6715,3,209,4507,787,6709,3370,281],"tags":[1673,2489,199,5360,6716,2560,5430,6710,842,6707,5313,5917,5370,394,6717],"class_list":["post-5761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-belgium","category-bernard","category-brussels","category-carrefour","category-eric-hall-2","category-expo","category-ghent","category-nivelles","category-old-cars","tag-belgium-2","tag-bernard","tag-brussels-2","tag-carrefour","tag-congo","tag-eric-hall","tag-expo","tag-ghent","tag-kebab","tag-long-day","tag-minerva","tag-nivelles","tag-old-cars","tag-solar-panels","tag-van-blocked-in"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5761"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5761\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5763,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5761\/revisions\/5763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}